The Rights of nature movement

Latest in a series of posts on the environment

Rights of Nature Movement

Peter Crownfield shares his reading. If we aren’t reading, we aren’t learning and growing. Please share your reading.

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Hello everyone, Mike Ludwig here, this week, dozens of journalists and news publications, myself and Truthout included, signed a statement citing the thousands of scientists who say we are currently living through a climate emergency. Together, we have agreed to use the term “climate emergency” in news stories about climate change, so you will start seeing that term pop up at major news outlets that actually grasp the severity of the crisis. Of course, Truthout has been using the terms “climate crisis” and “climate emergency” for years now; we’ve been trying our best to warn people that it would get this bad.

Now, this podcast is not about politicians, it’s about the people who are doing something about the climate emergency from the ground up. On our last episode, we took a look at the direct action movement, which uses civil disobedience to block construction of oil and gas infrastructure and keep fossil fuels in the ground. We spoke with supporters of one of the longest running arial blockades in US history, which blocked construction of the mountain valley pipeline for some 900 days — if you missed it, I definitely recommend checking that out.

This time around we are looking at another current within the grassroots environmental and climate movement, the Rights of Nature Movement. Activists often argue about whether it’s possible to create meaningful change from within the existing legal and political system — but Rights of Nature, which is inspired by Indigenous thinking, has a novel
proposal — why not change the system itself, so nature is recognized to have legal, enforceable rights, much like a corporation or a human being?

continue . . .

Rights of Nature Movement

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